Related Articles

At least four people have been confirmed dead after a shooting in eastern Canada.

The incident in Fredericton, the capital of the Canadian province of New Brunswick, is ongoing but police say they have one suspect in custody.

Police have urged people to “stay in their homes with doors locked at this time for their safety”.

The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately known.

The shooting is said to have happened on Brookside Drive around 8:20am local time (7:20pm WA time).

National broadcaster CBC contacted employees at a nearby Tim Hortons and they said they have locked their doors of the coffee shop so customers could not exit or enter.

Robert DiDiodato, who lives on Oakland Avenue, which connects to Brookside Drive, said he heard a series of “firecracker” sounds.

“With the tempo, it might’ve been a gunshot,” he told CBC. “It was sort of like a pop, pop, pop, pop.”

About five minutes later, he could hear similar noises near his home.

“Doors are locked and everybody’s inside,” he said.

Several police, firefighters and paramedics are at the scene.

The CBC says people have started to be escorted to safety by police.

In 2014, another mass shooting in New Brunswick led to the deaths of three Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and the wounding of two more in Moncton.

At the time, the incident was one of the worst of its kind in Canada, where gun laws are stricter than they are in the US and deadly attacks on police are rare. But a proliferation of weapons has led to an increase in gun crimes in recent years.

Last month, a gunman walked down a busy Toronto street, killing two people and wounding 13 before turning his gun on himself.